With the release of version 8.2 just around the corner, and PC-BSD 9.0 slated for later this year, we will be stopping the production of new packages / PBIs for the PC-BSD 7.x series in the near future. Users still running on 7.x are highly encouraged to upgrade to the 8.x series in order to obtain the latest versions of PBI packaged software applications. While new PBIs for 7.x will no longer be built, we will still maintain an archives of the 7.x PBIs on our FTP site for historical purposes:

Gerard van Essen of FreeBSD News has a blog post about PC-BSD’s plans for this year:

Today Kris Moore, the project’s founder, announced PC-BSD 8.2RC1 and with regards to his plans for 2011 he writes:

“For 8.2, it is mainly a release to include the latest FreeBSD 8.2 / KDE 4.5.4. Also some bug fixes are present for advanced partitioning, letting the user select between MBR/GPT, and easily toggle between UFS+S/ZFS.

On the 9.0 front, we’ve implemented a new system of “meta-pkgs” which will let users customize their particular desktop based upon the available packages in the release. This means we can now select alternative desktop environments, such as Gnome/KDE/LXDE/XFCE and others. In order to accomplish this, all of our tools have been re-written in pure QT4, removing any requirements for KDE4 to be present.

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of the first Release Candidate for PC-BSD 8.2.

Version 8.2-RC1 contains a number of enhancements, improvements, and bug fixes in response to previous 8.2 testing snapshots. Some of the notable changes are:

* Updated to FreeBSD 8.2-RC1
* Fixed issue detecting the proper video card driver
* Fixed some crashes when adding new users / groups
* Added /sbin/nologin as a shell choice in the user manager
* Let created users have a homedir of /nonexistant via the GUI
* Fix customizing desktop languages when using a () in the description

Version 8.2-RC1 of PC-BSD is available for download from our mirrors. Everyone is encouraged to test this beta and to report any bugs to the testing mailing list. Instructions for beta testers can be found in the PC-BSD Handbook.

There will be a PC-BSD booth at SCALE, February 26–27 in Los Angeles. We’ll be giving out copies of PC-BSD 8.2 (which will be released by then) as well as some cool swag. The SCALE expo tends to be busy, so stop by the booth early to say hi! and get some swag before it runs out.

The lead article in this month’s edition of the Open Source Business Resource was contributed by iXsystems. It describes some of the business reasons behind the company’s choice to use only FreeBSD and PC-BSD systems in its own infrastructure and provides a cost/savings comparison for both software and maintenance costs. It also contains some good references and percentages if you’re looking for something to show your manager.

We’re looking for someone who can test the EasyBCD page of the Handbook. To do so, you’ll need an installation of Windows and PC-BSD.

I’ve verified that the instructions work if you check the “Install PC-BSD bootloader” in the disk setup screen during PC-BSD installation. What needs to be tested is if the Windows boot loader can still find PC-BSD if that box is not checked during the PC-BSD installation. Please leave a comment posting your results and I’ll finish up this page of the Handbook to indicate whether or not this box needs to be checked.